UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Refracting Ipseity in African American Drama A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Theater Studies by Jesús David Valencia Ramírez Committee in charge: Leo Cabranes-Grant, Chair Professor Christina McMahon Professor William Davies King December 2020 The dissertation of Jesús David Valencia Ramírez is approved. _____________________________________________ Christina McMahon _____________________________________________ William Davies King _____________________________________________ Leo Cabranes-Grant, Committee Chair December 2020 Refracting Ipseity in African American Drama Copyright © 2020 by Jesús David Valencia Ramírez iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over the past four years I have received support and encouragement from several people. I wish to express my sincere appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Leo Cabranes- Grant, who has been a mentor and a friend. His kind guidance, illuminating suggestions and encouraging advice were determinant for the culmination of this work. I would like to thank my dissertation committee of Professor Christina McMahon and William Davies King, who patiently shared their expertise with me and constantly opened my vision to new perspectives. The support of the Theater and Dance Department at UCSB is truly appreciated. I want to thank Professor Irwin Apple, chair of the department, for his solidarity, and Daniel Stein, whose illuminating remarks gave me crucial insights for my work. I also want to extend my gratitude to Mary Tench and Eric Mills for their relentless commitment to guarantee the wellbeing of every graduate student. Special thanks to Hala Baki, colleague, classmate and friend. I would like to thank the Department of Dramatic Arts at Universidad del Valle, Colombia, especially to Professors Everett Dixon, Alejandro Gonzalez and Ma Zhenghong, who have been my mentors, colleagues and friends. The staff of Barnard Archives and Special Collections, under the direction of Martha Tenney, was also vital for completing this work. Most importantly, I wish to thank my loving and supportive wife Daniela Marin, and my twin sons Nicholas and Matthias, who are an endless fountain of inspiration. iv VITA OF JESÚS DAVID VALENCIA RAMÍREZ December 2020 EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts in Theater, Universidad del Valle, Cali-Colombia, June 2008 (summa cum laude). Master of Philosophy, Universidad del Valle, Cali-Colombia, April 2017. Doctor of Philosophy in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, December 2020 (expected). PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2011-14: Instructor, Department of Dramatic Art, Universidad del Valle, Cali. 2015-: Assistant Professor, Department of Dramatic Art, Universidad del Valle, Cali. 2017-20: Teaching Assistant, Department of Theater and Dance, University of California, Santa Barbara. 2019-20: Associate, Department of Theater and Dance, University of California, Santa Barbara. Fall 2020: Teaching Assistant, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Santa Barbara. PUBLICATIONS “Mamet: Creador desde la Ciudad de los Vientos.” EntreArtes No.8, Facultad de Artes Integradas de la Universidad del Valle, 2009, 151-170. AWARDS Graduate Student Block Grant, Department of Theater and Dance, UCSB, Fall 2019. Chancellor Fellowship, UCSB, 2016-2017. Best Acting Award, 2nd Asian Theatre Schools Festival, Beijing, China, 2012. Scholarship Artistas Jóvenes Talentos 2012, ICETEX, Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia. Andrés Bello Price, Best 50 ICFES Exam (Colombian standardized test), República de Colombia, 2000. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Dramatic Criticism. Studies in American and African American Drama with Professors Christine McMahon and William Davies King. v Studies in Identity and Philosophy of Art with Professor Leo Cabranes-Grant. vi ABSTRACT Refracting Ipseity in African American Drama by Jesús David Valencia Ramírez This dissertation interrogates multiple tensions between group identity and personal identity in African American drama. Borrowing from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s and Paul Ricoeur’s theorizations about group identity and self-formation, I propose two conceptual tools of analysis based on an understanding of identity as interaction and drama as a refractive medium of experience: ipseity and aesthetic refraction. I develop these concepts by applying them to the analysis of six African American plays: Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind, Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro, Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and June Jordan’s I Was Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky. In each play, I problematize essentialist readings of group identity, disclosing the singularities of the characters’s interactions in relation to the structure of the works and the authors’s personal perspectives. My dissertation discloses how singular interactions can recast the image of a group, how interracial characters can be torn apart by different narratives of belonging, how history acts and is acted upon in relation to individuals, how interaction rather than inheritance determines belonging, how communities vii are dynamic processes in lieu of fixed products, and how a diverse social milieu provides different affective value to different groups without absolutely determining the agency of the individual. I argue that ipseity and aesthetic refraction allow for a methodology that problematizes essentialist perspectives over identity-formation based on group identity. I conclude with a discussion of possible applications for ipseity and aesthetic refraction beyond dramatic criticism. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ................................................................................................................1 II. Chapter 1: Recasting and Ascribing ........................................................................19 A. Planes of Representation .......................................................................25 B. Patterns of Performance ........................................................................30 C. Recasting ...............................................................................................37 D. The Character is the Statement .............................................................44 E. Narratives of Belonging ........................................................................51 F. Accumulation .........................................................................................59 G. Self-destruction .....................................................................................64 H. Coda ......................................................................................................69 II. Chapter 2: Digging and Belonging..........................................................................72 A. Refracting History .................................................................................76 B. Performing Images and Events .............................................................83 C. Digging the Past ....................................................................................93 D. The Other America..............................................................................103 E. Different Sizes .....................................................................................110 F. Interaction as belonging .......................................................................123 G. Coda ....................................................................................................135 III. Chapter 3: Bonding and Connecting ....................................................................138 A. She Who Comes with Her Own Things ..............................................143 B. Ipseity and Community .......................................................................150 ix C. Making and Unmaking ........................................................................159 D. Another as Oneself ..............................................................................171 E. Categories and Groups ........................................................................188 F. Social Oratorio .....................................................................................195 G. Poetics of Diversity .............................................................................205 H. Affective Rhizome ..............................................................................219 I. Diverse Opacities ..................................................................................227 J. Coda......................................................................................................240 IV. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................244 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................259 x I. Introduction The English word “character,” from the Greek charaktêr, originally denoted a mark impressed upon a coin, something fixed and permanent as a warrant for authenticity. According to the OED, during the seventeenth century the meaning of “character” changed to designate “moral or mental qualities strongly developed or strikingly displayed”1 by an individual. Under this new definition, character became a metaphor